Squarespace SEO: How to Optimize Your Site
Rich snippets (not to be confused with featured snippets) are little bits of extra information telling searchers more about your content. For example, on recipes you can display ratings, calories, or prep time. Or on events you might include the dates of upcoming shows.
Using schema markup on your site will not directly impact rankings, but rather the rich results can help you stand out from other listings, which can help increase your click through rate (CTR). If your content would benefit from rich snippets, check out these resources from Google:
Step 12. Consider Hreflang
Do you have a multilingual website? If you hope to target content to different languages or regions, implement hreflang tags on your site.
Step 13. Optimize for Mobile & Voice Search
Acknowledge that mobile search and voice search are here to stay and pay attention to capturing this traffic. Take another look at your content to keep the context of your site relevant to users — talk and think like your intended audience.
If your site is already well optimized for search engines, then you should be optimized for mobile devices. But because page speed is even more important for mobile users than desktop users, use Google’s mobile speed test to check your site.
Voice searches tend to contain more words and also may be more targeted. For example, if a shoe company previously optimized for ‘white sneakers’, now they may want to consider long tail queries such as, “where are the cheapest white sneakers?” Again, your SEO efforts need to shift focus towards user intent: answer people’s questions and solve people’s problems.
Step 14. Create a Custom 404 Page
A 404 code is a signal that says an original page is missing — also known as a broken link.
As your website grows, broken links are almost inevitable. Mistakes happen. At some point, a site visitor will mistype a URL or click a link that you forgot to change. What do your site visitors see if they visit a bad link? See for yourself by trying to visit a URL that you know doesn’t exist on your website (example: www.yourdomain.com/xyz).
Did you know? You can change the default 404 page on your Squarespace site.
One common misconception regarding 404s is that it is best practice to simply redirect to the Home page, but this is not preferred because it can can make for a poor user experience. Why? Site visitors may not realize the page they were trying to find doesn’t exist which can cause confusion or frustration.
How does a good 404 experience help SEO? One reason is that the length of time site visitors stay on your website is noted by search engines, so always do your best to help your users explore your site and find the content they need. This email series has more information on how to create this page.
Step 15. Turn on AMP
If you publish news stories, you might want to consider enabling AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages. Google prioritizes AMP results in mobile searches because the content loads faster which improves overall user experience.
While AMP may not be a ranking factor, priority placement in search results can lead to more clickthroughs.
